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Okay, so here’s the scenario: you distribute .deb packages without an apt repository, but want to start signing your packages to ensure they aren’t corrupted or tampered with during transit to your users. I say “without an apt repository” since apt has its own mechanism for signing whole releases, via SecureApt.

The tools you are expected to use for this purpose are debsign and debsig-verify. Unfortunately I found the documentation for these to be pretty thin and ended up having to read the source of debsig-verify to work out what was expected of a signed package.

So hopefully to prevent others from having to trawl through source code, below are steps you could follow to sign your own .deb packages. My method is somewhat contra to the prescribed method from Debian, however it is the only way I’ve managed to get working. Please suggest better methods if you know them.